Re:Using Lua as a Serialization Format
by jmiskovic on Thursday June 18, 2020 @03:51AM
(#23560794)
I disagree, there are many things it is great at.
The language is well designed, with orthogonal features that complement each other. Coroutines and meta-tables are easy to understand and still powerful way to organize and control code base.
You can actually learn it in a week, and hold all of the language in your head. A very valuable thing in my opinion. The code is very readable to beginners (unlike Perl, Haskell or APL).
The interpreter is incredibly fast. Even non-JIT implementation is surprisingly fast.
The LuaJIT FFI is so convenient that the difference between C/C++ libraries and Lua libraries almost disappear.
There are cross-platform hosting frameworks that allow you to write and execute dynamic interpreted code on otherwise locked down platforms (Android, Switch, TVs...).
I would say Lua lacks tooling and better organization of community. Biggest Lua communities were built around products that embed Lua like WoW, Roblox, Corona (now Solar2D).
The language is well designed, with orthogonal features that complement each other. Coroutines and meta-tables are easy to understand and still powerful way to organize and control code base.
You can actually learn it in a week, and hold all of the language in your head. A very valuable thing in my opinion. The code is very readable to beginners (unlike Perl, Haskell or APL).
The interpreter is incredibly fast. Even non-JIT implementation is surprisingly fast.
The LuaJIT FFI is so convenient that the difference between C/C++ libraries and Lua libraries almost disappear.
There are cross-platform hosting frameworks that allow you to write and execute dynamic interpreted code on otherwise locked down platforms (Android, Switch, TVs...).
I would say Lua lacks tooling and better organization of community. Biggest Lua communities were built around products that embed Lua like WoW, Roblox, Corona (now Solar2D).